by Ken Brosky
“That is true. Reckless is a better word, I think. Still, your … gift, as it were, alerts you to the most dangerous among us. In the past, he’s always been more of a talker than a doer. But this time was different. That he’d seriously considered stealing music from the world is a terrifying prospect.” She set aside another box, blowing a strand of curly hair away from her face. She looked so … normal. Her face was flushed from lifting the boxes, and her soft blue dress looked like the kind of thing you might find on, well, a teacher or a lawyer. The most normal Corrupted I’ve seen yet.
She turned, smiling at Briar. “I take it you don’t recognize me.”
The rabbit tittered, clicking his tongue. “I confess I do not.”
“No matter.” She shrugged. “It was some time ago. A new wave of music was becoming very popular. I was singing much more back then, finding myself swept up in the wave before I even knew what hit me. I had a fan. Her name was Juliette.”
My heart skipped a beat. “The hero?”
The woman nodded. She set aside another box. “She didn’t know I was one of the Grimm brothers’ creations until she saw me in concert. Being the crafty person she is, she snuck backstage to meet me. I was the first of my kind she’d met who had not yet been consumed by the evil that afflicts us all. She was kind enough to let me live.”
“Did she …” I licked my lips, hoping. “Did she have any message for me?”
The woman stood straight, pursing her lips. “Mmmmm … no, I don’t believe so. But she was looking for something. Something that would aid a future hero in her travels. I promised her I would deliver the item to her successor should we cross paths. But before I could do that, I had to find my dear fiddler once again. I’d lost contact with him for so long. It wasn’t until the evil began to truly afflict him that he began to steal music. And even then it was another ten years before there were rumors that a strange affliction was causing people to be unable to hear music.”
“Ten years.” I tried to imagine my brain without music for ten years. I couldn’t. It was impossible. “There are people out there who have been without music for that long?”
The woman nodded. “Perhaps if my ex-love didn’t enjoy drowning himself in alcohol, he might have been a little more … productive. And perhaps a hero would have dreamt about him sooner.”
Briar made a “pfft” noise. “Always the hero’s fault.”
“Ah! Here it is.” She reached down between two old dusty boxes. “I hid it away right under my darling’s nose all these years.” She pulled out the object. I gasped.
A bow. Not a big one, not the kind a hunter might use, but rather a very small one no longer than my arm. It was curved, made of a dark wood, with a taut string.
“I do say.” Briar reached out, touching the bow with his paw as if it might be made of glass. “Is that the fabled bow from the fiddler’s story?”
The woman nodded. “It is said any arrow shot from this bow will stun any animal it hits. The fiddler once used this to win acclaim after his story had ended. Then, the alcohol began consuming him. He sold the bow to a hunter. He sold many of his possessions … and not to very good-natured people.”
“So he was a jerk,” I said.
The woman frowned, then nodded. “Juliette made me promise to repay her act of kindness. She said there would come a day when the bow would help another hero. She’d seen it in a dream.”
I let her set the bow in my hands. The wood felt smooth. Heavy. “Thank you for the gift. But how will you restore the music?”
“I can find the fiddler’s victims,” said the woman. “The music calls to me. It courses through me like a river. I will find everyone who has lost it and restore it to them. They’ll not know it even happened until they hear a song playing. Then they’ll remember. And when they understand what they’d lost, what they have regained, they will weep with joy.”
She turned to leave. “Wait!” I said. She turned her head. “If you haven’t changed yet, then what’s your secret?”
“There is none,” the princess said. “The Corruption takes us all at different times. But it does take us all.”
“I hope … I don’t see you soon.”
The woman smiled a warm smile. “At least not until the music is restored. Then who knows? Perhaps you’ll see me in your dreams … and I will see you.”
Chapter 7
“So let me get this clear,” Seth said. “You destroyed a guitar?”
I spread the sleeping bag over my legs. We were parked in a truck stop parking lot just east of the Minneapolis. On the other side of the street was a big hotel with comfy beds and mini fridges and a hot shower. Oh, to have a little extra money. Maybe I should have taken that twenty from Sam Grayle …
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yes,” I said, reclining the passenger’s seat. From the back came a whimper from Briar. “Sorry.”
“Quite all right,” Briar said. “I’ve slept in more cramped quarters than this. Why, there was one time when I found myself in the unfortunate circumstance of sharing a bed of leaves with a squirrel who had the annoying habit of smacking his mouth …”
“I just can’t believe you smashed a guitar,” Seth said. He had his chair only reclined halfway, with a plush pillow resting against the driver’s door. An old brown blanket covered his body. It was the blanket that normally sat on the couch in his living room.
“It wasn’t just a guitar,” I said. “It was a magic guitar that, when played, forced people to dance.”
“OK, so you smashed the coolest guitar on the planet.” He scoffed, grabbing his can of soda from the beverage holder underneath the stereo. “And instead, you got an old bow that looks like it couldn’t shoot an arrow more than ten yards.”
I looked at the bow sitting beside the curled-up rabbit in the back. “Yeah, it does look a little dingy. But the woman promised …”
“Oh, right. The mysterious singing woman who promised to return everyone’s music. I’m sorry, but I’m with Briar on the one. You should ‘a killed her.”
“This isn’t a democracy!” I exclaimed. “And I’m not going to kill any Corrupted who are still good. Especially not if it means letting thousands of people spend the rest of their lives unable to hear music! I mean, who knows how many people the fiddler hurt?”
“But still,” Briar said, “there is always the possibility she will turn evil when you are incapacitated. She may kill. She may cause untold carnage.”
“I’m not changing my mind.”
“Alice, I must strongly disagree …”
I shook my head. I was done talking about it. I’d made a decision and that was final. I couldn’t constantly second-guess myself. It would drive me insane. And I couldn’t bring myself to kill a Corrupted who still had some good left in her. The closest I’d come to that had been Cinderella, and it hadn’t been easy even though she’d had some incredibly strange power over a bunch of terrifying rats.
“I can’t believe the fiddler was going to steal everyone’s music just to upset his ex-girlfriend,” Seth said, making a raspberry sound with his lips. “That’s a lot of work. A lot of work.”
“Revenge,” Briar said, “is a dish perhaps best not served at all. And given that Corruption has a tendency to magnify certain characteristics …”
“You’re missing the most important point,” I said. “Both of you. Briar, she told me she would see me. She told me she’d seen me last night. Have you ever heard of something like that happening? Because you said they couldn’t see me. You totally promised they couldn’t see me.”
“That is rather strange,” Briar admitted. “Conceivably, though, you should be able to control yourself in your dreams. It usually takes some time, which is why I’m loathe to tell heroes until … well …”
I turned in my seat, glaring at him. “Spit it out.”
The rabbit winced. “Well, until after the hero has survived a few encounters with Corrupted.”
“Oh, I totally g
et that.” Seth laughed maniacally. “Train ‘em slow. Let the weak ones die off right away. It’s like when we had trainees at the burger joint, and we wouldn’t teach them how to run the cash register until they’d worked for at least a couple weeks. Cuz so many quit right away, you know, it would just be a waste of time.”
“Give me some quarters,” I told the rabbit.
Briar dug in the pockets of his vest. “I do believe I have some nickels, but I fear larger currency is out of the question. Too many coins and my vest pocket puffs out and it simply doesn’t look right.”
I grabbed the change he had, then grabbed the change sitting in the empty beverage holder beside Seth’s soda.
“Where are you going?” Seth asked.
“I need to shower,” I said. “And brush my teeth.”
And think.
I went into the truck stop’s women’s restroom. There were only two shower stalls, and one of them was being used. I took the other one, inserting the necessary change to start it up, setting my hand purse on the little steel tray beside the shower. The first blast of water was cold and I adjusted it as quickly as I could. When it was steaming hot, I grabbed my little travel bottle of shampoo.
I don’t know about you, but in my opinion showers are always a good time for serious reflection. And this evening’s shower was a reflection festival. Music stolen. A mysterious orphanage. A deal with a dwarf.
The library.
The fencing team.
High school.
Joey Harrington.
Chase.
The incredibly short life span of the hero.
Where did it all end? How would it end? When the princess had mentioned Juliette, it had been a terrible reminder of the hero’s mortality. I’d hoped for another message from Juliette, something that might guide me. A few sentences to set everything right and make me calm again and maybe even tell me how to survive for a long, long time.
Or just a secret telling me how to get back my real life.
The shower turned off just as I finished getting the suds out of my hair. I used the complimentary towel to dry off, then zipped up my hand purse, double-checking to make sure the fountain pen was still there. My purse was in a sorry state. It contained, in no particular order: a pen, an empty bottle of shampoo, a travel toothbrush and travel toothpaste, a tube of lipstick, and a little disc of foundation.
I went back out to the half-full parking lot, hoping for a decent night’s sleep, one without any dreams of the orphanage or anything else. Normal dreams.
Inside the car again, I pressed my head against my soft pillow and listened to Briar nibble on the giant marshmallows. I wondered if he even needed to brush his teeth at all, or if dental hygiene came free of charge when you were created with magic. The green lights of the massive gas station sign at the end of the parking lot seemed incredibly bright, burning through my eyelids.
“Hey,” Seth said in a low voice. Outside, a big diesel truck rolled by. I fought the urge to open my eyes. It was just a truck. Not some terrible Corrupted growling and salivating as it looked in through the window. We were safe here. The doors were locked. The fountain pen was in my handbag next to my left leg.
“What is it,” I mumbled.
“Do you think Trish is going to turn out like that fiddler guy? I mean, like, if she doesn’t stop drinking and partying.”
“I defer to the rabbit.”
Briar, caught off-guard, finished a marshmallow and cleared his throat. “Well, I would certainly recommend she not, ah, imbibe any distilled spirits … at least until she is older and perhaps a little wiser, mmm? And perhaps even then it would be best to, ah, avoid making a habit of it. Alcohol is such a fickle beast. One must be ever so careful, and there are few eighteen-year-olds who are responsible enough …”
“Seventeen.”
“Pardon?”
“Seventeen,” Seth said sadly. “She doesn’t turn eighteen for another month.”
We were silent at that. It was easy to forget Trish was still seventeen. It seemed so much younger than eighteen. But what was “18” besides a number? Another birthday doesn’t make you any more mature. It’s your experiences and knowledge that do it. And for Trish, there were a lot of “experiences” but not much knowledge coming from them.
I opened my eyes, glancing left. Briar and Seth were fast asleep. Briar was clutching his half-empty bag of marshmallows. They looked so peaceful.
I closed my eyes again.
Screams.
No laughs this time. Only screams.
I tried to follow the sounds, but I found myself floating once again through the same mysterious hallway. I made my way into the living room, a large room filled with tall bookshelves and an old red velvet sofa with intricately carved wooden trim. There were two windows along the wall, each of them covered by heavy blood-red drapes.
Drapes that were moving. Breathing, almost, caught by a breeze no doubt coming in from outside. I could feel the cool breeze. I tried to move closer. This seemed important.
A shadow moved across the wall, followed by the sound of bare feet padding on the wooden floor. I turned slightly just in time to see him: a boy, no older than six or seven, hurrying his way toward the drapes. He had soft blond hair and chubby cheeks and was wearing a pair of blue overalls and a white long-sleeved shirt that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in days. There were holes, too, near the cuffs, and before the boy passed me I noticed both his little hands were crumpled into fists.
From somewhere inside the house, there came a roar. The boy flinched, stopping a few feet from the drapes, one hand squeezing the wooden frame of the couch. He looked over his shoulder, his sweet little brown face scrunched into a look of pure terror. He turned back to the windows, pulling aside the curtains.
“No!” he gasped.
Bars. There were iron bars in front of the windows.
The boy grabbed them, pulling with every ounce of strength in his little body. But it wasn’t enough. He had little strength to begin with—that much was clear just by the outline of his bones underneath the shirt.
“Alex,” came a grisly female voice. The boy turned, and his thin face turned pale. His eyes widened.
Turn, I commanded. Turn! Nothing happened. I was stuck staring at the terrified boy, unsure of who—or what—was behind me. A shadow crept across the boy’s face, tall and ghoulish-looking as it spread over the drapes. It shrank as the woman stepped closer to the boy.
She was tall. That was the first thing I noticed. In addition to being tall, her dry, bristly gray hair was done up in a thick bun that made her even taller. She had a pointed nose and wrinkled skin that hung from her cheekbones like slabs of rotten meat. She was wearing a dark purple dress buttoned tightly up to her neck, with white frilly cuffs. Around her waist was a belt and from the belt hung a single keychain filled with skeleton keys.
“This room is off-limits. How did you get out?” the woman snapped.
“The door was unlocked,” said the boy named Alex.
The woman’s face darkened. Her upper lip curled just a bit. I tried to take a step back, willing myself to move. Nothing happened.
“You’re lying to me.” She reached out, grabbing Alex by the collar of his shirt. “Do you think you can escape this place? Do you think there is something out there for you?”
The boy stayed silent, not struggling with the woman’s iron grip. Her long, bony fingers dug easily through the worn fabric of his shirt.
“Answer me, boy!”
“I can’t work anymore,” the boy said. “My … my fingers hurt and my tummy is sore.”
I felt a pain of remorse at the word “tummy.” And anger, too. What was happening here? What was this Corrupted doing with the children?
“Do you think I care?” the woman barked, pulling on his tattered shirt. He fought back now, grabbing her hands and trying to pluck her short fat fingers from his shirt. She tightened her grip, lifting him off the ground. “Where did you get such strength?”
she wondered, her voice gravelly. “Have you been eating your porridge?”
“Yes,” the boy choked out. The woman let him go, dropping him to the floor. Behind him, the curtains moved as the wind outside slipped in through the drafty windows. Just a horrible reminder of how close he was to freedom.
“Then you must eat more,” the woman commanded. “Come along. Come along now.”
She shooed the boy to the doorway leading back to the hall. I found myself following the golden trail left by the stepmother, down in the opposite direction I always went in my dream. In this direction, there were only two lamps hanging from the walls and one of them was out, making it difficult to see to the far end. I floated behind the Corrupted woman, watching her dress flow behind her.
From the heavy closed door to our right came the muffled scream of children.
Alex flinched, but the woman simply cocked her head, grunting to herself.
“Into the kitchen now,” she said. “Hurry, you little brat.”
“But I don’t want porridge,” said the boy. We made our way into the kitchen at the end of the hall. It was huge, like the kitchen for our school cafeteria, with big stainless steel refrigerators along one wall and rows and rows of bowls and plates and cooking equipment along the other wall. There were three massive stainless steel vats that looked like big pots sitting in a row behind a long wooden cutting table that looked as if it had been lazily wiped down, with long red streaks on its surface.
Blood?
“Everyone wants porridge,” said the woman, shoving him around the table to the vats. Two of them were still cooking, and as I moved closer I could see inside: thick, gray stew with little bits of boiling oats bouncing off of the rising bubbles. I could smell it: stale, wheaty, a hint of corn, and something else that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
The woman grabbed a bowl and handed it to the boy. She pushed him to the third vat, where a batch of the porridge looked to be cooling. There were no boiling bubbles, but it was still warm enough that steam was rising from the surface.
“Go on,” she said. “One good bowl and then we’ll head downstairs. A few hours of work and you’ll be ready for bed. We mustn’t stop now. We’re so close.” She cocked her head, mouth agape. “I can hear his song … kywitt … kywitt … what a beautiful bird am I …”